Last week, while we were at the CLH celebrating the official end of Tax Season, my first order of priority was to finish the 1920s period dress that I started to work on about 2 years ago when Marty helped me alter the pattern. Then I decided to make a muslin. It fit just fine. Then I cut out the fabric and discovered that I had cut the facings backwards, (in my defense, the pattern doesn’t have an obvious right and wrong side) and I didn’t have enough fabric to re-cut them. So that meant purchasing more fabric in a matching solid navy because so much time has elapsed between the fitting and the muslin and the cutting that I couldn’t find the original fabric. And then more time elapsed before I got around to cutting the new facings. I finally resumed work on the dress around Christmas time (I think), and I was determined to push to completion. Which, as you can see, I did!

I really like this dress. Much better than my other 4 period dresses. It fits well; it’s simple; and it doesn’t have any mended tears or holes. I’m tempted to make another one before I forget how, but if I do, I’d like to make it in a tone-on-tone print with a matching calico band instead of the rickrack. And that would involve making yards and yards of double fold tape. And I really prefer piecing projects.

So when I finished the dress, I treated myself to Fun with Fabric. I was intrigued by the “Chopping Block” article in the March-April 2012 Quiltmaker. The technique involves making a basic 9-patch block or a 9-patch variant, cutting the block into fourths, and rearranging the pieces into a new block. I wanted to try the Hourglass or Grecian Design block, but I couldn’t come up with 3 fabrics that would work well together from the assortment of fabrics that I had brought with me to play with, so I tried out the “Disappearing Nine Patch” instead. I liked it, which meant that I then wanted to make it into something useful and decided on placemats. To convert the square block into a rectangle, I made another Disappearing Nine Patch, cut it in half, and stitched the half and full blocks together. Again I liked the result, so I made a third Disappearing Nine Patch to go with the other half of block #2, and had two placemats. Here they are:

Obviously they are not identical. Neither are they the same pattern with the fabrics reversed. I think that is fun. The top placemat is displayed on top of the fabric that will be used for the binding. It is the same print in a complementary color way. The backing, which has yet to be purchased, will be a tone-on-tone cream/beige, and I’ll quilt in the ditch around the print patches with brown thread that matches the background of the print. I like them.

Last night I went out to dinner with friends and was able to present them with the completed quilt for their second son, who is 5 weeks old today. This might be a record in terms of quilt completion time after birth – at least for me. The pattern is pretty basic, but I like letting the animal print be the focus – after all, I did a bunch of fussy-cutting for those squares!

And here’s a detail picture with a better look at the focus fabric. Note that the solids are more crinkly post-quilt-washing than the focus fabric. This is likely due to the fact that I forgot to pre-wash the animal fabric so it shrank along with the batting (my usual cotton+rayon from bamboo) when I washed the completed quilt.

The backing is a brown plaid flannel.

The Crackpots who were consulted for advice on Big Brother gifts should know that the wheel-featuring present (a couple Little People cars) was appreciated by Adam. I can also report that baby Kyle is adorable.